I had loved him too much to let that mistake ruin us.
I still loved him.
“No, sweets, he didn’t. The drugs would have made things in that—er, department—useless.” She grimaced and shrugged. “I’m not saying he didn’t kiss Tessa and other things, but there was no sex involved. Tessa was able to make
it look like it happened by placing the cameras at certain angles and then manipulating the footage.”
“How do you know?” I demanded, jumping to my feet. “How could you possibly know that it didn’t happen?”
The look on Dallas’s face would have been amusing if I’d been in the mood to laugh. I wasn’t. I wanted to scream and throw things. I wanted to yell at my mom and Lana and anyone else who had known this and hadn’t told me. I wanted to beat the shit out of Harris who hadn’t said one word about any of this when we’d…
Yeah.
“I’m a nurse, Lucy,” Dallas said as if I needed reminding. “After Emmie told me what happened, I went to see Natalie. Harris was still staying at his parents’ house and I told them that there was no way Harris’d had sex with Tessa. He didn’t believe me at first but when I convinced him, things got a little crazy. The boy went off the rails. He started screaming about letting you go when he didn’t need to and ran off. Nat and Dev didn’t hear from him for almost a week. I thought for sure he would go see you, or at the least, call you.”
“Well, he didn’t.” And that made it all that much worse. All the hurt, all the pain, felt like it was pushing down on my chest with ten times the weight of what it had been just minutes before.
“We figured that out when you didn’t say anything,” Mom murmured for the first time. “I wanted to give him time, in case he was just trying to wrap his head around everything. What happened to Harris was a nightmare, Lucy, but I know it hurt you just as bad.”
I couldn’t respond, couldn’t even look at her. At any of them. This entire day felt surreal. I was sure I would wake up any minute with a headache a million times worse than I’d experienced earlier. Everything that had happened from the moment I’d opened my eyes that morning hadn’t really happened. This was just a dream.
A really bad dream.
“I have to go,” I muttered, already turning for the door.
“Where are you going?” Mom called after me. “Lucy?”
I stopped before I could reach the door, but didn’t turn back to face her. “I have to see Harris.” I needed to know why he hadn’t told me, because Mom had been right. He should have been the one to tell me. No one else but him.
“Lucy, give yourself some time to think about this,” Lana suggested
I turned around then. “I’ve done nothing but think about this for five months. Five months of driving myself crazy thinking that my boyfriend slept with someone else. Five months of replaying those damn videos over and over again in my head.” A sob surprised me by bursting free, making it impossible to catch my breath for a moment. “And I didn’t have to because it didn’t really happen.”
“Marcus will take you,” Aunt Emmie said, sounding like her usual calm self. I envied her the ability to stay calm when things went to hell.
“No. I’m tired of taking Marcus with me everywhere. I don’t need him. He’s your security blanket, not mine.” It was a lie, but I was too angry at them all to admit it to myself. “I’m done being treated like I’m still nine years old. You’re all suffocating me.”
Mom was crying just as hard as I was now. “Lucy, please. Baby, just calm down and we will fix this.”
Fix this.
Fix this?
That was what Harris had said that morning. Everyone wanted to fix it. Wanted to fix me.
But I was unfixable.
Chapter 10
Harris
Mondays were normally my day off, with my assistant manager coming in and handling things since it was the least crazy night of the week. This week she was on vacation or I would have followed Lucy home.
She’d been gone by the time I’d gotten out of the shower, just as I figured she would be, but that hadn’t stopped me from hoping. I’d gotten the third degree from Kin, though, which had made me even more late getting to work since I had to stop by my apartment and change first.
I hadn’t been thinking about who could hear us when Lucy and I had made love. I hadn’t been thinking, period. If I had been, my latest fuckup wouldn’t have happened and Lucy would still be a virgin. I spent thirty-five minutes convincing Kin that I wasn’t going to hurt Lucy this time around, that I was going to fight for her and not let her go again.
Now, as I sat behind my desk trying to go over the latest liquor order I needed to make, I couldn’t stop thinking about that morning. Each second from the moment I’d woken up until I came back to reality after the most incredibly mind-blowing release I’d ever experienced in my entire life replayed over and over again. The taste of Lucy’s lips, her skin…her pussy lingered on my tongue. The memory of how her scalding heat had felt around my dick as I’d slipped into her tight little body was driving me crazy and I’d been in a state of full-blown arousal despite the second shower I’d taken when I had gotten home earlier.